The Creation of “Motion” Digital Art in Photoshop

In this tutorial, I will show you the steps used to create this “Motion” Digital Art in Photoshop. We will use splatter brushes to paint the background, and apply particles/break-apart effect with various textures.
We will also be using a number of filters, dodge and burn tools and smudge tool to fine-tune the effect.

In this tutorial, I will show you the steps used to create this “Motion” Digital Art in Photoshop. We will use splatter brushes to paint the background, and apply particles/break-apart effect with various textures.

We will also be using a number of filters, dodge and burn tools and smudge tool to fine-tune the effect.

This is an intermediate level tutorial.

Note: The Photoshop tutorial is done in Photoshop CC – therefore some screenshot may have slighting different layout as in the earlier version. Some brushes are exclusive to Photoshop CS6.

Here is a preview of the final effect I have for this tutorial: (click to enlarge)

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Step 1

Create a new document sized 1000px * 1172px with white background. Use splatter brushes you downloaded and paint some pattern over the background layer.

You can basically go nuts with those brushes and paint whatever styles you like. For me personally, I tried to keep the centre portion in black, while the rest is in white:

Load the model image into Photoshop. Select the body area, copy and paste it over to our canvas. Re-size and position it to the centre of the canvas as shown below:

Step 2

We will work on the model in this step. Load the rusted metal texture into Photoshop and use the lasso tool to select a piece of the texture as shown below:

Copy and paste the selection to our document and move it to cover the upper body of the model. Set this new layer as clipping mask to the model layer, and change its layer blending mode to “Color Burn”:

and here is the effect so far:

Repeat the above process and add more rusted metal texture over the body. For the arm area, make sure you set the texture’s blend mode to “Pin Light”, and here is the effect so far:

Add the following adjustment layers as clipping masks on top of all the rusted metal texture layer:

Black and White

Layer mask on the black and white adjustment layer:

Levels

Layer mask on the levels adjustment layer:

Curves

and here is the effect so far:

Step 3

We will add some tile effect over the body. Load the roof texture into Photoshop and select a piece of it as shown below:

Copy and paste the selection over to our image. Resize and position it as shown below:

Use the burn tool to darken parts of the tile to create a bit of depth:

Duplicate this layer multiple times, until they cover the upper body area as shown below:

We can mix in some smaller pieces as well, this helps brining more variety to our image:

Step 4

We can add some particle effect around the body with a particle brush, you should be able to find lots of them over the internet:

We can add some extra texture over the background with the following splatter texture. Use the rectangular marquee tool to select a portion of it as shown below:

Copy and paste the selection to our image, make sure you place it just above the background layer (where you paint those splatters in step 1). Set the opacity of this new layer to around 50%:

Apply the following layer mask to this new splatter layer to hide parts of it:

Step 5

We’re almost done! For final touches, flatten the image and duplicate the background layer. Use the burn tool with 50% exposure, midtone to darken the following parts of body:

Use the Smudge Tool to apply some motions into the following parts:

Add the following Curves adjustment layer on top:

Layer mask on the curves adjustment layer:

and here is my final effect: (click to enlarge)

That’s it for this tutorial! Hope you enjoy going through it and find it useful. Drop me a comment below if you have any question.

My name is James and I have been using Photoshop since version 5.0 (long time ago!). PSD Vault is my spare time hobby and I write majority of the Photoshop tutorials and articles here. I hope you enjoy my blog, and feel free to leave a comment or contact me if you have any questions.